BODY MODIFICATION PARTY PLATTER
By Raul Montes and Mike Werckle

Penises already kind of look like hot dogs, and bifurcating them adds to this effect. Just like a hot dog, there is a casing and a filling. It's easy to slice a hot dog down the middle and see what's inside, maybe put something inside, like extra cheese, but it's not so easy to do that with living body parts, especially those connected to your own body-- mostly because it would hurt like HELL. But I imagine there's a sort of compulsion to it, like biting your finger nails. When I bite, I'm usually thinking on some level about trying to get that one piece of nail or skin off, and then the whole thing will be perfect. Before I know it, my fingers are a bloody mess, and then I leave them alone for a while. And during that time I am seeing inside my finger, just a little bit, but I am seeing a part of it I've never seen before.

With the image of a split hot dog floating in my head, naturally I felt compelled to get some sausages and split them and pierce them and serve them up on a platter for people to eat. So, there's the shock value of equating the human body to meat, and the parody of works of "edible art," like gingerbread houses. But there's also the idea of commodifying extreme body modification, much in the same way that accepted forms of body mod are, like breast enhancements, or hair removal, or muscle enhancing supplements. And on another level, there's the challenge of "normalizing" extreme body mod-- if you could just walk into the supermarket and buy a body mod party platter in the same way you would by a cake with Cookie Monster on it, then maybe it's worked it's way into the main stream.

<<<<<